The thesis of today’s blog essay will focus only on one microcosmic aspect of the macrocosm of technology: the phenomenon, or quality, of instantaneity in technology, and how this provides one insight into the uniqueness of computer technology vis-à-vis other forms of technology.
Unlike most other forms of technology, the technology of personal computers has a feature that is fairly systemic, and certainly central—particularly with regard to the most common role of personal computers, Net navigation—, in its operations by which the human user interacts with it: delayed response. And this feature—delayed response—is the precise opposite of our thematic concept: instantaneity.
Instantaneity means “the capacity to act or respond immediately, instantly.” Of course, by “instantly”, we do not mean it with any kind of scientific or metaphysical literalism: we mean it only in terms of its relatively subjective sufficiency. And the subjective experience of instantaneity will not vary significantly from one person to the next. I do not know if there have been actual psychological studies measuring what infinitessimal time increment is a statistically measured norm for a threshhold for instantaneity. Personally, I would put that increment at one second. I think most people would agree with me.
By the term “infinitessimal time increment”, I mean simply the smallest time passed for a response from technology, from the moment the human enacts an operation by engaging his technology, to the moment that technology in question responds to the human action. The technology’s response time should be no longer than one second, if we are going to call it “instantaneous”. Any longer than one second, and that technology’s response time is no longer instantaneous, but is demonstrating a delayed response.
Of course, once we establish this definition of a delayed response—and its diametric corollary, instantaneity—there is the other matter of degrees. Obviously, a machine that has a delayed response of two seconds is significantly different from a machine that has a delayed response of 20 seconds. Both machines, nevertheless, are operating according to delayed response: the difference is only a matter of degree. Degrees do matter: and so, in addition to the fundamental binary distinction that divides all technology according to whether they operate instantly or by delayed response, we may also consider that the technology of the second class—of delayed response—is further subdivided into degrees of delayed response. Within this subdivision, the distinctions begin to be more subjective: one man’s length of response time felt to be unacceptable will be, to another man, more or less acceptable (or even the same man may feel the same length of response time to be acceptable or unacceptable depending on that man’s mood, etc.).
As we said above, personal computer technology involves a great deal of delayed response time. The vast majority of other technologies that people deal with on a daily basis, however, involve very little or virtually no delayed response time. Most other technologies, in fact, provide instantaneity in their operations which synergize the human user with them. This quality of non-PC technology was even more the case with the increasingly simpler technology of the past. Pre-electrical technology, particularly, provided the eminently satisfying instantaneity of the hammer hitting the nail on the head. I.e., in classical technology, percussion was key, and percussion delivers an immediate response. Even where a system of complicated gears was involved, the engagement of those gears—which the human user understood, because it was understandable even to the simple mind—was responsively immediate, and their deployment clear and productive. Of course, when the machine malfunctioned, this instantaneity of classical technology was frustrated: but even when classical technology malfunctions, it is not as maddeningly cryptic as the innumerable bugs and mysteries which tend to plague the personal computer.
In one sense, the history of technology can be divided into three overall phases:
1) mechanical technology
2) electrical technology
3) computer technology.
I think it can be argued that the term classical technology embraces phases 1 and 2, while some other term is needed to denote the radically new form that has emerged with phase 3. That is to say, electrical technology was not a radical break from mechanical technology, so much as it was an amazing extension of its logical systems. And, while of course computer technology has not fallen from the blue sky de novo but has developed in great part from already existing precursors within the systems of classical technology, nevertheless its nature and effects are so profoundly unique that it deserves to be given a new rubric to distinguish it from classical technology. For now, I would use the obvious term post-classical technology.
Assigning temporal boundaries to these divisions is somewhat difficult, since there is considerable overlap, but if we simply use the dates each subsequent technology began to be socially influential, we could say the following:
1) mechanical technology—prehistoric era to the late 19th century
2) electrical technology—late 19th century to the mid-1980s
3) computer technology—the mid 1980s to the ongoing present.
With both mechanical technology and electrical technology, the vast majority of technological implements and machines deliver instantaneity. With personal computer technology, the phenomenon of delayed response is all too common. I submit that this delayed response is, and will be over time, exerting psychological and ergonomic effects upon the human users. Never before in history has man interacted so regularly with, and has become so dependent upon, a technology so riddled with delayed response mechanisms. Surely this must be exerting a toll, however seemingly subtle it may be, upon those who use PCs so much—not only to those old enough to remember what life was like before the late 80s, when most daily ordinary technology provided instantaneity, but also to the younger generation, because the older forms of technology have not become extinct but perdure in myriad ways. And there is no reason to think that those older forms of mechanical and electrical technology will disappear anytime soon. And, of course, while there are still millions who do not have computers, and millions more who may have them or have access to them but use them only relatively rarely, it is a safe bet that the proportion of PC users will continue to expand in the near future, perhaps at an astronomic rate.
Who knows what the effects are of repeated, regular, ordinary delayed response on a human interacting with technology. One effect that comes to mind—particularly since I rather consciously experience it with my PC—is stress: more specifically, what physical therapists these days call “micro-stressors”. These micro-stressors exert stress on the human, but the effects for the most part remain subliminal, below the threshhold of consciousness, although they can build up over time and can cause actual muscular tension or pain, and/or psychosomatic symptoms of fatigue.
Perhaps because of my intellectual interest in, and awareness of, this phenomenon of instantaneity, I am rather acutely conscious of what for other people might be micro-stressors, and it bugs the hell out of me when I click my mouse somewhere, reasonably expecting a quick response time, and end up having to wait 10 or 15 or 20 seconds—sometimes up to 60 seconds and beyond. Even 10 seconds can be a long time, when the expectation is an immediate response. For the reader who might dismiss my pet peeve here with a smile, I would invite them to imagine how they would feel going through the day (let alone going through the week or month or year!), where every simple ordinary action of classical or electrical technology—whose instantaneity they take for granted—suddenly performed with delayed response time. And this scenario should not merely imagine a delayed response time, but also another feature I neglected to mention: an unpredictably variable delayed response time. So in this scenario, imagine you get up in the morning and you reach over to hit the snooze bar on your alarm, and you have to wait 15 seconds before it turns off. Then you reach over to switch on your bedside lamp—and you have to wait 10 seconds before it turns on. And you remember the last time you turned it on, it took only 2 or 3 seconds; then the next morning when you go to turn it on, it will suddenly, unpredictably take 20 seconds. Then you stumble into the bathroom to take a piss, but you have to wait 20 seconds before the toilet seat goes up at your prompting (or 5 or 10 or 30... you can never predict how long). Into the kitchen, the refrigerator door takes 70 seconds to open, when the previous evening it only took 15 seconds. And so on. I think the reader gets my drift now. I wager that the reader would not tolerate such a relationship with technology as my scenario describes. Or, if the reader tolerated it, he would not like it, and would feel stressed, maybe grumpy at times, and would want to complain about it once in a while.
It seems odd that personal computers are so modern, so dynamically on the cutting edge of the future, and yet they cannot sufficiently provide the simple, yet so wonderfully pleasing and satisfying, quality of instantaneity—a quality that most technology has been providing to its human partners for millennia.
